Welcome to February! I imagine that sometime in December or early January, you set goals for 2014 or, at best, wrote a new year’s resolution. Speaking of resolutions, Jasmine Freeman shared a great article in our Daily Pillar Huddle on why resolutions don’t work and how to set the right resolution for yourself. If you want to listen to our huddle, visit Why Sticking to Resolutions is So Hard.

Today, I’m challenging you to set BIG goals this year. While we need small, short-term goals, BIG goals will impact our life in an entirely different way.

When you set BIG goals, you have to:

Stretch out of your comfort zone.

Humble yourself (you don’t know everything).

Reach out to people you normally would not in ordinary circumstances.

Seek new resources.

Test new skills or abilities.

Be disciplined and committed. These are very good traits to develop to help you manage all aspects of life.

Enlist staying power.

Embrace change which is a skill we need to exercise every day.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? The good news is that you get huge rewards! Little goals = little rewards; BIG goals = BIG rewards! But I’m not referring to financial rewards although that could be the result of setting new, better habits under your Financial Pillar.

How do you know if your goal is BIG enough? When training administrative office professionals, I often hear “I better not set my sights too high or I might not achieve my goal.” It’s actually the opposite: people don’t set their dreams, goals and expectations high enough. You don’t know what you are capable of achieving until you try. Whatever you set your target for is where your subconscious will take you. It normally doesn’t go beyond the picture you have put in your mind.

While setting BIG goals is scary, it is freeing. You will know your goal is BIG enough because it will cause you a little anxiousness but in a good way; it will seem impossible to reach but remember everything we have in our world is because someone saw it in their mind first.

Obviously, you have to weigh the risk. If it would be detrimental to your health, family or finances, then you need to be very careful or not do it. But I can also tell you from my own life, I have taken some big leaps with no guarantees and figured it out along the way. Everything Dave and I chose to do, did not always turn out the way we wanted. However, we had many more successes which overshadowed the struggles. Personally, I have gone against the grain many times and was glad I didn’t follow the crowd.

So . . . I am challenging you to muster up every bit of courage and creativity and commit to one BIG goal this year. Then read the upcoming February Monday Motivators to learn more strategies.